


Wherever You Are...

by Oroburos



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Season/Series 02, broganes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 14:55:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10026794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oroburos/pseuds/Oroburos
Summary: This is the third year in a row that Shiro's missed his own birthday.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short, angsty thing for Shiro's birthday event.

Keith waited until the rest of the Castle was asleep to make his way into the hangar where Black still laid silent and dark. She was still without power but they’d propped the access hatch in her side open, making it relatively easy to climb up to the cockpit. The sight of the empty pilot’s chair still hurt, still squeezed at the hollowness in his chest. But this was the only place on the ship where Keith could still feel Shiro’s presence.

He fell heavily into chair, tilted his head back, swallowed past the stubborn lump in his throat. “Hey Shiro,” he whispered roughly into the silence. “You know, this is the third birthday in a row that you’ve missed.” He dredged up a weak smile from somewhere. “We owe you a lot of cake.”

A bracing breath brought some of the strength back to his voice. “I bet Hunk could figure out how to bake one, though it might be green and a little strange-looking. Pidge could figure out the candles. It’s twenty-six this year, right?” He closed his eyes. “You’re almost a fire hazard, old man.”

He ran his thumb across the small lion carving he held clutched in his hand. “I even got you a present this year. Do you know how hard that was to do in space? How long it took me to find a wood that was soft enough to carve, but wasn’t poisonous or half-sentient and trying to eat me or something?”

He held the carving up, turned it in his fingers until it caught the light and the slight iridescence of the alien wood shone with purple speckles. “And you’re not even here to appreciate all my hard work,” Keith said, bittersweet.

He leaned forward and set the carving atop Black’s central control console, carefully wedging the back feet into the seam between two metal plates so it wouldn’t fall. “Well…it’ll be here for you, when we get you back. And we’ll have cake, and I’ll make you wear a dumb hat, and Lance will sing a stupid song and we’ll teach Coran and Allura all the best party games.”

He managed a tight, lopsided grin. “I’ll make sure to embarrass you as much as possible. Payback for all those times you did it to me. And for cheating me out of three years worth of birthday cake.”

He looked out the viewports that were the Lion’s eyes, stared at the wall of the hangar and thought of all the uncountable stars just beyond it. He remembered standing on desert sand this time last year, looking up at the clear night sky and thinking of how he’d never realized just how vast space really was. He had a much better idea of it now.

“Happy birthday Shiro,” he whispered. “We’ll find you soon, wherever you are. I swear it.”


End file.
